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June 2009
Sustainability on Wheels
Students, staff and faculty joined forces to build a solar rover that can bring
green energy to any corner of the campus.
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By Laura Tiffany
Sustainability on campus now has a set of brand new wheels: The solar rover has arrived, bringing portable green energy to the Farm and, in the future, to events on campus.
From left: Samantha Meyer '10, Professor David
Tannenbaum, Adam Kotin '09 and Farm Technician Juan Araya |
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"The solar station is a great way to get visibility for sustainability projects on campus," says environmental analysis major Samantha Meyer '10, who played an integral role in the construction of the rover and also works in the Sustainability Office. "Students don't always realize that we have solar panels on the roofs, but the rover can be parked outside of events, and students can really see how it works."
The rover is a trailer outfitted with three 200-watt photovoltaic panels that charge six 12-volt batteries. A charge controller helps avoid battery overcharging, and an inverter converts the battery's DC current into AC.
The rover has been in the works for a few years. Farm Technician Juan Araya brought the idea--which is similar to something he worked on previously at Cal Poly Pomona--to Environmental Analysis professor Rick Hazlett because the Farm needed electricity, but wiring was prohibitively expensive.
Students in Hazlett's EA 85 Farms and Gardens class took on the planning and fundraising of the project. "EA 85 is a fairly new course at the College, and one that takes a radically 'unconventional' liberal arts topic as its basis--sustainable food production and self-sufficiency," says Hazlett. "The motivation is an idea that one of the very great challenges of the coming century will be sustaining a solid agricultural base."
In 2007, students began exploring concepts for the design and securing funding, which came from the President’s fund for student-sponsored sustainability projects like the recycling center in Smith Campus Center and the folding bike program,. The following spring, the trailer and necessary components were purchased, but the project was fraught with mishaps. The trailer had to be sent back twice due to the wrong trailer being delivered and later because of missing parts and an attempted robbery, which brought the need for a more secure storage location to light.
This past semester, EA 85 students once again took up the project and gave it a due date: Earth Day.
"I got involved with this project at the beginning of the semester when I realized that the Farm had this amazing project with all the materials purchased--and no one to put it together," says Adam Kotin '09, a double major in Environmental Analysis and theatre.
Meyer, who originally worked on the rover in Spring of 2008, returned to the project as a volunteer. She, Kotin and Araya, along with the help of various others, put in many hours to get the rover ready for its public debut at the Claremont Earth Day Celebration on April 26. The week before the debut, Araya was scheduled to go on vacation, so Physics professor David Tanenbaum stepped in to help.
 "I taught Adam and Samantha about how the electrical system should work, and together we purchased a few missing parts and did the final electrical assembly," says Tanenbaum. "[We] were able to bring the trailer over to the physics parking lot and work out several last minute details in consultation with our machinist and electronics technician."
Sustainability Coordinator Bowen Patterson says the rover had a welcome reception at the festival: “We had hundreds of people stop by and explore the equipment, ask us questions, and congratulate the student team on completing the project.”
This summer, Patterson, Araya and others at the Farm will be ironing out the details of how the solar rover will be shared on campus. It will primarily be housed and used at the Farm, but is also to be made available for outdoor events on campus.
A naming contest for the rover is also planned for a later date.
“I hope it will show students that we take our energy supply for granted, never knowing where it came from or how much of it we used,” says Kotin. “Each and every party or event that occurs on campus has a significant environmental impact that is all but ignored as of now.”
Hazlett hopes the project will inspire more innovation on campus: “It is not an insubstantial advance, and might spark imagination for other low-cost experimental projects. I would love to see us move, for example, on the development of solar-powered utility carts. We have a lot of talent and imagination [here.] We certainly can think outside of our tight little disciplinary boxes and put it to work.”
Down at the Farm
The farm has many sustainability projects started, finished or in the planning stages, including:
• Animal husbandry. The Farm houses both a chicken coop and a beehive. “We use both projects to teach students about the benefits that both of these animals can provide to the environment and humans,” says Araya.
• The Dome. This green building has been around for a few years, and is used as a teaching tool in several classes.
• Biodiesel. Araya says that a biodiesel processor has been built, and workshops offered. In the future, they would like to take used vegetable oil from the dining halls to convert for diesel-operated vehicles, including the Farm’s tractor, which can be used to move the solar rover. A biodiesel generator may also be added to the solar rover.
• Solar cookers and solar dehydrators. These have already been built at the Farm.
• Composting. The Farm receives all the “kitchen prep” material from all the dining halls at Pomona and also from the Motley Coffeehouse and Mallott Commons dining hall at Scripps. “This material is composted at the Farm and then used as soil amendment for fertilization,” says Araya. Eventually, they’d like to use post-consumed material (i.e., food scraps), but “we would need a very intensive student education component to guarantee proper separation of materials as the students dump their food leftovers,” says Araya.
• Composting toilet. Currently, a group of students is researching and constructing the building that will eventually house the toilet.
Araya extends an open invitation to staff, faculty and students to offer their ideas for sustainability projects at the Farm. “We feel one of our roles within the campus community is to serve as a site where sustainability happens at Pomona.”
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